Category: General Comments

The problem with delicious

I recently heard (well, read on a listserv) from a couple of folks I know that were looking for an alternative to Delicious.  These people have a lot invested in their bookmarks but are finding it difficult to re-find them for various reasons and have therefore decided to move on.

I too have been having that problem as of late.  Perhaps I am not careful enough to put every tag in that I should for every entry, perhaps I am not consistent enough in my tagging and so forth.  While I could blame myself, it seems there are a couple of things that could be done to help me out, for instance, if I bookmark something, perhaps allow me to search not only the tags I have entered but also the top tags as many people do a better job of tagging than one.  That’s the power of the crowd, no?

I know, I know, Delicious gives me the opportunity to use the top tags when bookmarking.  Unfortunately, the main way that Delicious has been failing me is not recognizing when I am linking to something that already exists because the URL is slightly different therefore not giving me the opportunity to use those tags.

I spend a lot of time reading articles in the times, some of them directly from the site, some of them via RSS and many of them via email (from various news alerts that I have setup).  Each of these methods, visiting the same story on the times site yields a slightly different URL ending:

?partner=rss&emc=rss

?sudsredirect=true

?emc=eta1

?hpw

?th&emc=th

Here is the main URL for an article which is the base but could contain any of the above at the end:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/04/business/media/04click.html

It seems that I generally come upon NY Times articles in a different way than most other Delicious users as they never seem to be previously bookmarked.  Strange..  

Doing a tag search on Delicious for something obvious in the arlticle: “nytimes” and “seeclickfix” illustrates the problem:

There are at least 11 different entries with slightly different URLs..

Since mine will be the 12th version, I won’t have the benefit of having any tag suggestions from previous bookmarkers. This makes me sad and it probably means that I’ll never find the article again.

Come on..  Delicious..  I know it is easy to fall into the void when you are purchased by a company such as Yahoo but someone there must care a little bit..

Acacia wants to bleed the internet dry

Acacia to Acquire Patent Portfolios
Branching out on from their Streaming patents to just about everything else.
From the article: Among the acquired patents are those covering technology related to broadcast equipment, credit card receipt processing, peer to peer network communications, spreadsheet programs, datamatrix bar codes and image resolution or enhancements.

Hillary support’s The INDUCE Act

I was dismayed to learn that Senator Hillary Clinton has come out and in fact co-sponsored Senator Hatch’s Induce Act. What follows is a draft of a letter that I am writing to Sen. Clinton to express my concern. I hope that others will do the same.

Here is some background material:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c108:S.2560:
http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,64315,00.html
http://techlawadvisor.com/induce/
http://www.corante.com/importance/archives/004563.html
http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20040618-3906.html
http://www.futureofmusic.org/articles/INDUCEanalysis.cfm
http://action.eff.org/site/pp.asp?c=esJNJ5OWF&b=164928

Like your iPod, read this:
http://www.eff.org/IP/Apple_Complaint.php

Please comment on the letter as you see fit.

Dear Senator Clinton,

I was dismayed to learn that you have come out in support of Senator Hatch’s Induce Act. I hope that on further consideration of the issues that this bill covers that you change your stance to better reflect the opinions of your constituents and for the betterment of our society.

The Induce act as it currently is written does much to stifle free-speech, artistic and fair uses of media. Imposing legal responsibility on the makers of devices and software for illegal use such device or software will create a burden so great on manufacturers and creators of such programs that they will not develop or offer products that have potential for misuse.

I fear that by trying to curb the theft of copyrighted material you will instead be curbing the ability for individuals and groups with legitimate uses for the technology that enables such to use it. Being thoroughly immersed in an academic and artistic atmosphere, I am witness every day to fair uses of technology that would not exist today were such a law in existence. In fact I feel that the software that I am using to write this letter would not have been developed simply because it includes the ability to cut and paste text from any source into the document.

I believe that should this Bill become law that it will undo much of the progress of free-speech and alternative media creation that has been enabled by the internet, personal electronic devices, computers, tape recorders and so on. Furthermore it will be a giant step backwards and lead to increased power by the media and further relegate citizens to the role of consumer without a voice.

I hope that you will reconsider your position on this matter.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Shawn Van Every